Revolutionary optimism degenerated from autonomous will into worship of the organization.

Evidence

Even this frantic optimism is the perversion of a motif that has seen better days: the refusal to wait. Confidence in the state of technology made people see change as imminent, a palpable possibility. Conceptions entailing long intervals of time, precautions, elaborate measures for public enlightenment, were suspected of abandoning the goal they claimed to pursue. At that time optimism, amounting to a disregard for death, expressed an autonomous will. All that is left is its shell, belief in the power and greatness of the organization as such, devoid of any willingness for individual action, indeed, imbued with the destructive conviction that while spontaneity is no longer possible, the Red Army will win in the end. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 144

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: critical philosophy that becomes serviceable to power turns its own positives destructive; The ideology’s logical process devours the very people it was meant to serve; Powerholders can weaponize a revolutionary self-image without actual subversion (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Ideology transforms into a purely organizational device once totalitarian policy forms #corroborates (0.90) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 889
• critical philosophy that becomes serviceable to power turns its own positives destructive #corroborates (0.85)
• Powerholders can weaponize a revolutionary self-image without actual subversion #corroborates (0.80)
• The ideology’s logical process devours the very people it was meant to serve #qualifies (0.75)
• Peoples cut off from common action turn inward to claim collective divinity #complicates (0.75)
• Dominant groups become hegemonic when subordinates accept their vision as legitimate. #expands (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3380